Kocham cię
by Mandolin77
Summary: Fryderyk was finally dying, after all the years of surpassing his life-expectancy, and Ludwika felt as though some mornings found her cracking under the pressures of loving a damned soul. Written for the 163rd anniversary of Chopin's death.


Historical note: Ludwika is Frederic's sister; she's the brunette chick at his bedside who keeps arguing with the doctor. And I've taken the liberty of using the Polish spelling of the Chopin's names, so they look kinda weird.

_Kocham cię _translates as 'I love you.'

* * *

Ludwika stood at the window, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders as she gazed out at the storm clouds brewing beyond the horizon, beautiful against the almost-midnight darkness. Fryderyk had been asleep most of the day, still trying to recover from the physician's earlier visit. Her poor brother had been plagued by physicians for years, and he had confessed to her in a letter that her presence would help him far more than any doctor ever could—but he had been willing to brave another onslaught of tests if it would please her.

Her eyes burned at the thought. He would do anything to please those he loved; he had always been that way, even as a child. He would get up early to gather wildflowers for the breakfast table or finish someone else's chores, and when Emilia passed away he had taken her place as the storyteller of the family, weaving fantastical tales for Izabela and the many, many friends that always filled their home.

And now here they were, in a rented French apartment that was far too big and far too empty for the friends that filled it now. Fryderyk was finally dying, after all the years of surpassing his life-expectancy, and Ludwika felt as though some mornings found her cracking under the pressures of loving a damned soul. She would do anything for him, more than ready to return the favors he had blessed her with so many times, but there was nothing to do except watch as his face twisted and shrank beneath the pain of the mortal world, his body wasting away in preparation to pass into another realm.

There was the sound of rustling sheets behind her, and Ludwika turned to see her brother staring at the roses on the table beside his bed, head turned slightly as though in examination of some exquisite piece of artwork. Time seemed to slow for a moment and he looked almost well again, lost in the beauty of nature the way he lost himself in music. Ludwika held her breath, afraid to break whatever spell had been cast over their room, and his thin lips twisted up into a smile as he looked up at her, slowly against the light. It was the fever that made his dark eyes so wide and so bright, but she chose to believe that it was the splendor of the roses instead—the same way she chose to believe that the edges of his smile were soft and genuine instead of the wry, self-mocking gesture she knew it to be. In either case it was gone again as soon as it had come, and Fryderyk sank back against the pillows and Ludwika had to swallow back more tears. She wasn't going to cry.

He seemed to know this, seemed to sense her brokenness because at that moment he stretched out one hand and she tripped over her skirts to reach him. "My dear sister… my dear, dear sister. How much I've missed you."

She took his hand and raised it to her lips, kissing the back of each cold finger gently before she wound them in amongst her own. "I have been here."

He smiled again, reaching out his other hand to embrace her, and Ludwika sat down on the edge of the mattress beside him. "Yes, of course. Even in my sleep I could feel your spirit around me."

"You give me too much credit," she murmured, brushing her thumb across his knuckles. "How are you feeling?"

"Fatigued," he admitted, and allowed his smile to slip slightly as she squeezed his hand. "Where… where are the others?"

"I sent them all to bed. They have been keeping vigil since yesterday night." She paused and added, "Do you want me to fetch them?"

He shook his head and Ludwika shifted towards him, heavy skirts rustling as she moved. "No. They–" he stopped, teeth grit against a surge of pain. "They need rest."

"Fryderyk?" He shook his head again and she leaned over him, brushing damp hair out of his eyes.

"It's fine," he gasped, long fingers clutching hers, and she had a sudden, vivid memory of playing four-hand together, those same long fingers dancing across the keyboard and making music as they went. She'd apologized once because her skills were so abysmal when compared to his: she felt he deserved to play with someone of his own caliber. He'd only laughed and told her it was fine, it was fine, the same way he was telling her now.

Ludwika bent her head lower, loose curls falling free of her bun, and kissed his sunken cheek with infinite gentleness. She could not imagine how that young, gay man had become the stranger lying before her. "Try to breathe, brother. It will be over soon."

He nodded weakly and she kissed him again, feeling him shaking under her grasp. "It's fine," he said again, as if to assure her. She blinked tears back out of her eyes.

"I know it is," she whispered with a tiny smile. "You are so very, very brave, Fryderyk. Just try to breathe."

The room was silent for a long minute, and Ludwika held him while he took quiet, panting breaths, squeezing his eyes shut against the world outside. He was in pain, and it made her chest ache to know that he was in pain and she could do nothing to help him. She was his big sister; she was supposed to be his rescuer, his protector, and she was_ helpless_ in the face of this brutish disease.

"I love you," he choked out, and turned his head until he could brush his lips across the palm of her hand.

"As I love you, Fryderyk."

"_Kocham cię._"

She pulled her skirts onto the bed and lay down beside him, curling up with one arm beneath his pillow to support his head. He leaned towards her, cheek resting on her bosom, and she swallowed hard and carded her fingers through his dark, sweat-damp hair. "_Kocham cię_," she agreed. "Very, very much."

He sighed in contentment. His nightshirt was open, unbuttoned down to the center of his chest, and she could count each individual rib bone as they fell with the sound. "I… dreamed."

"Yes?"

"Yes. I think you were there."

She tightened her arms around him, the doctor's words crashing through her head—_It is said that people can have the most peaceful dreams just before they pass on_. "Are you feeling alright?"

"You had a little girl," he continued, almost as though he hadn't heard her. "A daughter. And she… she looked like Emilia." He closed his eyes, and a sound like a sob bubbled up in his throat. "She looked like Emilia, except with bright blonde hair."

"Emilia would have been beautiful with blonde hair," Ludwika whispered, holding Fryderyk to her breast. He nodded blindly.

"She was. In—in the dream. She was beautiful."

"Did she speak to you?" There were wet streaks shining on his cheeks as he nodded again, and she turned her face up to the ceiling and prayed silently for strength. He had never said it out loud, but Ludwika knew how much her brother missed their youngest sister… how much her death had truly scarred him.

"She was so kind," he mumbled, and she could feel grief of her own burning in her throat. "She said she wanted to leave the city, to go try to do something good with her life before it was over. I told her—" he stopped suddenly and sobbed again, louder, and Ludwika wrapped her arms around him as her own tears finally spilled over. She hadn't wanted to cry. "I told her she shouldn't go, she shouldn't leave you all alone, but she wouldn't listen to me." He wept into the folds of her dress, his face tucked into the fabric the way he used to do when he was a child. She petted her fingers through his hair as he whispered, "I promised that I would go, too."

"No," Ludwika said softly. "Fryderyk, no. You must stay with me."

"Emilia–"

"Emilia's dead." She had never spoken the words out loud before, and it felt like a relief and a betrayal all at once to finally admit that Emilia was _dead. _She was not absent or passed on or in a better place. She was dead and buried alone in a tiny wooden casket, rotting quietly beneath a gravestone—_Like a flower in which blossomed the beautiful promise of fruit. _

Fryderyk didn't make a sound, the pain—and he had _so much pain_—overwhelming him the point of silence. He had loved their sister desperately. They had all loved her, of course, each in their own fashion, and they had been there for her up until the very end, but Fryderyk had never quite gotten over the fact that she was gone. Their dear brother had a habit of giving his heart away, utterly and entirely, and it made him beautiful just as much as it made him weak.

The doctors had diagnosed him with Pulmonary Tuberculosis, but Ludwika knew his real condition. If he died, it would be of one too many broken hearts.

He made a sudden sound, a low groan caught in the back of his throat. "Fryderyk?"

He shook his head slightly, unable to speak. Ludwika winced in sympathy and ran one hand down the length of his back, trying to will away the rigidness of his muscles so that he could breathe again. Usually at moments like these she could talk to him, tell him about who had come to visit and what his little niece had done that day. But right then she was still seeing Emilia in her mind's eye, the tiny body lying cold and peaceful in the middle of the too-large bed, and she was wondering what it would be like when Fryderyk died.

He coughed a little and relaxed in her arms, and after another minute he turned his face up to her and smiled almost ruefully. "I should not go on like this," he murmured. "It is bad for my health."

"It is good for the soul," she assured him. Fryderyk stifled a small yawn, closing his eyes in clear exhaustion.

"My soul needs all the help it can get."

She laughed gently and pulled him up a little to press a soft kiss to his temple. "The world would be a much darker place if not for the light of your soul, dear brother."

"_Astra_," he whispered, blinking in something close to sleepy revelation. "My Astra."

"What?"

"Nothing. It was just… in my dream." He paused for a moment before adding, "It seemed so real that I had forgotten it was only a dream."

"You're a visionary."

"Or a madman," he agreed softly. "When you lose sight of what is true and what is not, I wonder—do you go insane?"

Fryderyk had asked her before whether she could see the things he saw, the ghosts that haunted his every sleep, but never had his questions been so_ blunt. _She wasn't sure what to say, how to answer him, and so instead she stared at the vase of roses beside the bed, their colors vivid and haunting in the unsteady light. "It would depend on how one defines madness, I suppose."

"In my dreams I am someone else." He closed his eyes. "I am someone I never had the chance to be. And when I wake up… there are times when I want nothing more than to go back there again: to leave of this cold, heavy body and exist only in the reality of my own subconscious mind."

"I don't think that is crazy, Fryderyk," she whispered, and wrapped the fingers of one hand around the back of his neck. "Everyone wants that sometimes. We want to be free. Just because you are fettered with a physical body rather than the invisible bonds that hold some of us, that does not mean you should be above the desire to be free."

Fryderyk sighed, suddenly and almost inexplicably angry when he wound up coughing again—and the anger morphed into tears that he choked on until he was dizzy from the lack of air. Ludwika was right: he was trapped. He was too weak to move from the bed he was lying on, chained to the medicines and morphine that kept him alive and unable even to reach his beloved piano in the next room. He loathed the feeling of total helplessness that came with a slow death, and on more than one occasion he had looked down and loathed the body that had failed him, all sharp valleys and crests of fragile bone. In his dreams… in his dreamland he was none of those things. He could move and dance and run and _fight; _he didn't have to be helpless anymore. And then he woke up in the morning and he was in Paris again, surrounded by people who loved him and who were helpless to change his fate.

"I hate this," he whispered. "_I hate this_."

He doubled over, weeping as he dropped his head upon her breast once more, and Ludwika closed her eyes and pulled him closer as she murmured meaningless words in his ear. One hand spread wide across the skeletal expanse of his back, and she could feel the muscles there trembling with the pain of living on borrowed time.

She bent towards him a little more until his feet were tangled in the skirt of her dress, choking back selfish and sympathetic tears. She wanted him to never die, and at the same time, horribly, she hoped his lungs would give in soon so that it could all be over. He was her family, her best friend, a child that she had helped to raise from infancy and who had, in turn, helped to raise her. They had hurried home to recount their first loves together—first kisses, first heartaches, first pains—and many, many nights had found them talking deep into the morning about their secret wishes and prayers, what they hoped for the future and what they remembered from the past. Even when he'd been gone they had written letters back and forth, pages long with slanted writing on both sides. Even when he'd been gone he had still, in a way, been there.

And now he was leaving her, once and for all. This would be his final voyage, a journey that millions of brave men had taken before him, and he was never coming back.

She kissed his pale lips gently, brushing them with her own as if he might break. His breath smelled sour, like milk that had been left out too long, and she realized, abruptly, that she missed her brother. She _missed_her brother—the scent of his cologne and the sound of his laughter and the feel of his arms when he hugged her, and it occurred to her that she would never experience those things again.

He was never coming back.

Something like grief crashed over her, a sudden and frightening emotion that stuck in her throat like unshed tears. It blurred her eyes and constricted her chest, and she realized she was mourning for a man who lived still, a man who was clinging to life in her arms. She sobbed out loud and hugged him again.

"I love you so much," she whispered, her voice as absolutely broken as the tiny, withered body she was holding to her breast. "I love you _so very_much."

"I will miss you," he answered hoarsely, and turned so that she could see his faint smile. Something in her chest tightened to the point of unbearable pain.

"Please, Fryderyk. Please don't leave me."

She knew that she might burn in hell for an eternity and _deserve _it, if only for the way she could watch her baby brother suffer and still think only of herself—but the heart was a fickle, narcissistic thing, and it was her heart that was forming the words.

"Ludwika..."

"You can fight this," she breathed. "You can. Forget this death and come back to me."

"Forget this death," he mused softly, his eyes unfocused and full of unspoken pain. "My sister... my sister. I tried." He paused for a long moment, and then his lips turned up one more time in a way that was wholly unlike a smile. "I cannot forget her."

Ludwika winced inwardly, closing her eyes. She knew what he meant, but she had to ask anyway because his words would haunt her forever if she did not. "You mean Emilia?"

"Yes."

They sat in silence for a moment, and when Ludwika finally managed to open her eyes again Fryderyk was looking over her shoulder at something she would never see.

"Was she very happy?" Ludwika asked suddenly, fingers curling around the back of his neck. She wasn't sure what the dream meant, but for some reason she wanted to know anyway, as though their sister's happiness could make up for their current pain.

"She was lonely…" he whispered, "but I think she was happy still. She was happy to see me."

She focused on the ceiling again, her eyes tired and blurred enough to make shapes out of nothing until the white plaster seemed full of angels and devils all waiting to take her brother away. "Good. That's good."

"She didn't remember who I was," Fryderyk said, his voice so soft that the words seemed like a confession. Ludwika rubbed one strong hand across his shoulder, wincing a little at the feel of sharp bones shuddering beneath her touch. "She couldn't remember me. But she… it felt like she knew there was a connection between us somehow."

"Did you still recognize her?"

"Yes." He nodded a little against her chest. "Always."

She wondered at this answer—_always_—and wondered if she would remember his face when they met in the afterlife. She glanced down to where his tears were slowly drying and tried to commit to memory her brother's gaunt features: the high brow and prominent nose, the soft curve of cheekbones that arced down into hollow spaces where his body used to be. His hair had thinned and grayed in the last few years, but it still held some of the delicate curls of his boyhood that she had loved so much when he was a child.

"You said she looked beautiful," Ludwika murmured, and Fryderyk nodded again. "Did she…?"

"A little," he answered, even before she could think of how to phrase her question. He had always been able to read her mind. "She looked healthier, but she was still… still sick. She was still very thin."

Even as a child Emilia had been frail, and back then Fryderyk had been the one to look out for her, caring for her so much that sometimes he forgot to take care of himself. On more than one occasion she had collapsed in the garden—she had loved the garden—and had to be carried back inside, and Ludwika could still recall the look of sheer _frustration_ on her brother's face because he wasn't strong enough to help. It mirrored almost exactly the emotions she felt right then, lying side by side and watching him slip away.

"Always," she said again, and pressed her nose into the space beneath his ear. Even his ears, they said, showed evidence of consumptives. "Fryderyk, I will always know you."

"Yes," he answered. There was no question in his voice, no uncertainty at the sudden change of subject as he turned his face to brush against hers. "I love you, sister."

"I love you," she repeated. "I love you." And the tears drowned out whatever else she had wanted to say.


End file.
